"What's this I'm lying in?"
For answer the man, taking up a pail which had been standing by his side, dashed its contents full into Cyril's face.
"That's what you're lying in--about eighteen gallons or so of that; as nice clean water as ever you swallowed. You see, I've had to give you a sluicing or two, to liven you up. We didn't want to feel, after all the trouble we've had to get you, as how we'd lost you."
The water, for which Mr. Paxton had been wholly unprepared, and which had been hurled at him with considerable force, had gone right into his eyes and mouth. He had to struggle and gasp for breath. His convulsive efforts seemed to amuse his assailant not a little.
"That's right, choke away! A good plucked one you are, from what I hear. Fond of a bit of a scrap, I'm told. A nice little job they seem to have had of it a-getting of you here."
As the fellow spoke, the events of the night came back to Cyril in a sudden rush of memory. His leaving the hotel, flushed with excitement; the glow of pleasure which had warmed the blood in his veins at the prospect of meeting Daisy laden with good tidings--he remembered it all. Remembered, too, how, when he had scarcely started on his quest, some one, unexpectedly, had come upon him from behind, and how a cloth had been thrown across his face and held tightly against his mouth--a wet cloth, saturated with some sticky, sweet-smelling stuff. And how it had dragged him backwards, overpowering him all at once with a sense of sickening faintness. He had some misty recollection, too, of a cab standing close beside him, and of his being forced into it. But memory carried him no further; the rest was blank.
He had been kidnapped--that was clear enough; the cloth had been soaked with chloroform--that also was sufficiently clear. The after-effects of chloroform explained the uncomfortable feeling which still prostrated him. But by whom had he been kidnapped? and why? and how long ago? and where had his captors brought him?
He was bound hand and foot--that also was plain. His hands were drawn behind his back and tied together at the wrists, with painful tightness, as he was realising better and better every moment. He had been thrown on his back, so that his whole weight lay on his arms. What looked like a clothes line had been passed over his body, fastened to a ring, or something which was beneath him, on the floor, and then drawn so tightly across his chest that not only was it impossible for him to move, but it was even hard for him to breathe. As if such fastenings were not enough, his feet and legs had been laced together and rendered useless, cords having been wound round and round him from his ankles to his thighs. A trussed fowl could not have been more helpless. The wonder was that, confined in such bonds, he had ever been able to escape the stupefying effects of the chloroform--even with the aid of his companion's pail of water.
The room in which he was lying was certainly not an apartment in any modern house. The floor was bare, and, as he was painfully conscious, unpleasantly uneven. The ceiling was low and raftered, and black with smoke. At one end was what resembled a blacksmith's furnace rather than an ordinary stove. Scattered about were not only hammers and other tools, but also a variety of other implements, whose use he did not understand. The place was lighted by the glowing embers of a fire, which smouldered fitfully upon the furnace, and also by a lamp which was suspended from the centre of the raftered ceiling--the glass of which badly needed cleaning. A heavy deal table stood under the lamp, and this, together with a wooden chair and a stool or two, was all the furniture the place contained. How air and ventilation were obtained Paxton was unable to perceive, and the fumes which seemed to escape from the furnace were almost stifling in their pungency.
While Paxton had been endeavouring to collect his scattered senses, so that they might enable him, if possible, to comprehend his situation, the man with the pail had been eyeing him with a curious grin.